


and you decide what you think of me

by toastweasel



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen, can you imagine the grief they felt when Korra was found, can you imagine what the scene was like when they met her for the first time, i can. so i wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:48:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29011545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastweasel/pseuds/toastweasel
Summary: Kya and Katara meet the new Avatar for the first time.
Relationships: Katara & Korra (Avatar), Korra & Kya II (Avatar)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 85





	and you decide what you think of me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cassiopeiasara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassiopeiasara/gifts), [H0locene](https://archiveofourown.org/users/H0locene/gifts).



> I've wanted to write this for a long, long time, and I finally finished it.
> 
> For cassiopeiasara, who talked with me about Kya and Katara's grief until the ember lit, and Holocene, who helped me stoke the fire until it was at full blaze.
> 
> Beta by Linguini, the all mighty. Title from the song Little Voice by Sara Bareilles.

“Master Kya? Might we bother you for a moment of your time?”

Kya looked up from the letter she had been composing to Lin in one of the rare brief moments she had had to herself since starting her clinic months ago. People were flocking from all over the world to visit and be healed by her, but it left very little free time for things like correspondence. Lin, knowing something of what that was like, being Republic City’s new Chief of Police, had taken to just mailing her letters directly to the practice, which Kya appreciated. It gave her something to look forward to at work, when things like arguing with the City Healing Council over funding or fighting to get rare herbs imported for healing poultices became too much to manage.

Or like now, when three members of the White Lotus showed up in thick winter robes and long navy travel cloaks and asked for a moment of her time.

Kya set her pen and half-finished letter aside and stood, brushing down her healing tunic out of habit. “Of course. How can I help you?”

The eldest of the three members glanced at his fellows, who moved quietly and efficiently to close the door and guard it. Kya tensed—she had no love lost for the White Lotus, but especially not for Zuber. When she was a kid, he’d loved to suck up to her father by reporting to him on her every waking moment until long after she’d left Air Temple Island.

This wasn’t shaping up to be a friendly visit.

She held out a hand to draw up a water whip, but Zuber held out his hands placatingly as the two junior Lotus members shared looks of alarm. “Master Kya, please. We don’t mean you any harm, just to ensure we are not overheard.”

Kya didn’t trust Zuber as far as she could throw him, and she was generally a pretty trusting person. “Explain.”

“We have found the Avatar.”

All the air collapsed out of her lungs like  the time a storm had suddenly torn a seam in the sail of her cutter. She dropped a hand to the polished wooden surface of her desk, steadying herself, suddenly weak in her knees. She always knew this day would come, but i t had been almost five years and the White Lotus had trotted the globe thrice-over looking for the reincarnation of her father.

“Where?” she asked softly.

“Here, in the South Pole,” Zuber said gruffly, looking embarrassed. “In a remote village far out on the ice pack.”

Kya swallowed thickly. There were dozens of such villages scattered across both poles, and it would have been easy to miss the new Avatar amongst them if one didn’t know where to look. “What’s her name?” She pauses. “It is a girl, correct?”

The senior Lotus nods. “Her name is Korra.”

She sat down heavily in her chair, and as the sealskin sagged against her weight, Kya became suddenly aware that she was clenching her fists. She forced herself to flatten her fingers against her desk, and took a deep, calming breath to release the tension in her shoulders. She took another one, in and out, closing her eyes and focusing on the qi swirling in upset knots in her abdomen and lower back.

She couldn’t do much about it now, not without her crystals and a healing bath, but knowing was good enough.

Kya took one final deep breath and opened her eyes, pulling her hands into her lap.

She only had one more question.

“Have you told Mom yet?”

.

.

.

The White Lotus had said the new Avatar was a spitfire, a rambunctious and uncontrollable ball of energy who bent first and asked questions later.

The girl who trailed in beside her father, her tiny hand curled around his large fingers, looked anything but.

Kya didn’t even need to look at her aura to know that she was nervous; it was written all over her face, in the luminous blue eyes that flicked over everything in the room. Upon closer inspection, she could see the anxiety in the girl’s aura; the red spooled off her in waves and curled in uneasy circles.

She isn’t surprised. Even the most rambunctious of children got nervous, and Kya had a feeling Zuber and the girl’s parents had made a Big Deal about the visit. They certainly had with Kya and Katara on their end, and at this point Kya just wanted to get it over with.

Zuber stepped in behind Tonraq and Senna and the door to the hut’s vestibule shut behind him.

“Avatar Korra,” he said, quite formally, “may I introduce you to Master Katara and Master Kya? They were your previous incarnation’s family.”

Korra clutched at Tonraq’s hand and stared, eyes flicking between Kya and Katara.

Kya glanced at her mother, who seems frozen in place like the icepack in midwinter. She could see the grief pouring off her mother’s aura in waves, pools of twisted black sadness that she hasn’t seen manifest since her father’s death. She moved forward to take Katara’s hand, but Korra beat her to it.

The little Avatar slipped from Tonraq’s grasp and crossed the void between them, beelining for her mother. She stood in front of Katara’s increasingly stooped form and stared up at her; the room was deathly quiet with parents, Lotus members, and Kya holding their breath.

Then Korra reached out and reverently touched the intricate bone beading at the bottom of the old waterbender’s tunic. She stroked them as if they brought back an old memory, then carefully asked,

“Master Katara?”

Kya watched as her mother’s eyes crinkled softly.

“Yes.”

"So you were my wife?” Korra asked pertly, finally looking up and meeting Katara’s gaze.

“I—yes,” Katara replied slowly, glancing at the Lotus members before back down at the child in front of her. “And, at one time, your waterbending instructor.”

Korra grinned happily, her smile cheeky and eyes dancing merrily. “Of course you were my wife,” she chirped, as if extremely satisfied with Katara’s answer, “you're so pretty."

The young Avatar’s boldness broke the tension in the room—Kya laughed in surprised delight as a smile blossomed over Katara’s face. Kya saw Tonraq and Senna exchange wry glances as Zuber grimaced unhappily.

Whatever he had wanted to happen clearly hadn’t.

Katara quickly dropped down to her knees. “I hear you’re a waterbender.”

“Nah, I’m the Avatar!”

She thrust her fist out and shot out a fireball that vaporized with a whoosh halfway across the room. Zuber scrambled forward, as if to grab hold of the girl, but Katara held out her hand to stop him.

Korra eyed him uncertainly.

“That’s very good, Korra,” Katara finally said, and drew her attention back to her.

“You think?” Korra asked brightly.

Katara nodded. “I’ll be excited to see you learn to control it.”

“I don’t get to do that one for a long time though,” she whined, a pout on her lips. “I have to learn all the other stupid elements first.”

“Do you not want to?” Kya asked, surprised.

“Of course I want to! I just want to learn fire first!”

So unlike her father, Kya thought, who hadn’t even wanted to touch firebending, and routinely avoided using it unless he absolutely had to. She could practically see her mother thinking the same.

She dropped down on her knees beside her mother. “Do you know why the Avatar learns the elements in order?”

“Cuz it’s dumb.”

She felt the smile on her lips even before she saw Zuber’s indignant expression. The smile apparently won her over to Korra, because she suddenly had the little girl’s full attention.

Kya reached out and placed her hands palm up in front of Korra like her father did when she was young, and he wanted her to pay attention. When she had gotten older, it was something they had done to maintain connection while having a serious conversation. 

The fact Korra didn’t immediately clasp hands with Kya made her chest tight in grief.

Kya closed her eyes and tried to let the grief go, or at least attempted to distract it with the point she wanted to make. “Have you ever met a firebender?”

Korra hesitated, then shook her head.

“One of my best friends is a firebender,” Kya told her, and wiggled her fingers until Korra reached out and settled her hands gamely on hers. Her little hands were warm, and Kya resisted the urge to wrap her fingers around them. “She has amazing control.”

“So?”

“ _ So,” _ Kya drawled out patiently, like she was explaining the importance of tooth brushing to the kids at her clinic, “fire is a powerful element. It’s life and warmth, but it can also mean danger and destruction.”

“I’ll be careful!” she said earnestly.

“I’m sure you will be,” Kya allowed gently, “but if you won’t study the other elements, you know what you won’t be able to do?”

Korra eyed her suspiciously.

Kya leaned in conspiratorially. “Firebenders that study earthbending can control their fire so accurately they can light a torch at a thousand paces without setting anything around it. And you know what firebenders can also do?”

The little girl leaned in, her eyes huge at the possibilities. “What?”

“Firebenders that study waterbending can redirect lightning.”

Korra’s eyes shone. “Cool!” She immediately turned back to Katara and grabbed her hands tightly up in hers. “You taught my past life to waterbend right?”

Katara gave her daughter a glance that definitely said we’ll-talk-about-this-later, then returned to Korra her undivided attention. “I did, yes.”

“Can you teach me waterbending again so I can redirect lightning?”

Tears pooled in Katara’s eyes, and Kya reached out to put a supportive hand on her shoulder. She could already see the little girl causing mayhem and madness in her mother’s waterbending classes, and the thought of having her bright smile and inquisitive expression around was more appealing by the second.

Kya still missed her father terribly. She missed his soft words after her long days of travel, the way he appeared with freshly brewed tea for morning meditation and how they compared travel notes every time she came back from being away. His loss was an ache deep in her chest, that panged every time she looked at the little girl that had come to take his place in the world.

But Korra was not Aang.

She would never be Aang.

She was just a girl, and no matter how her excitable demeanor might compare, she was her own person, with her own background and life. And would be her own Avatar, the people she would collect and the journeys she’d set out to encounter entirely her own.

She was Avatar Korra of the Southern Water Tribe, the first waterbending Avatar in over four hundred years…and Kya had a burgeoning feeling she’d be a really,  _ really good one. _

Beside her, Katara smiled and squeezed Korra’s hands gently.

“It would be my honor to teach you waterbending, Avatar Korra.”

Korra cheered in delight, and something warm blossomed in Kya’s heart. 


End file.
